Or maybe oversaturation of old ideas. Time travel, forehead aliens, the Borg, The Q, Voyager went overboard with it. At that point, all the fascination was gone.
I think fans would have watched Enterprise, it did try to look and sound different, but it was too late. Same thing with the TNG Movies-- they seemed like little more than TV episodes, they were too stuck on the old TV format thing.
This. Drive home the danger 75,000 light years from home. Make Kathy a leader through difficult times. Kirk lost his friend and then his ship, Picard was kidnapped, Sisko ruminated about his dead wife, the losses in the war he created. There is nothing wrong with showing her damage over saving the Ocampa. Instead, it was the merriest ride home I have ever seen.
Enterprise is another ball of wax. The contempt for the Vulcans (which is in no way connected to the previous series' interpretations of them), the lack of danger in these new technologies, the bland characters on a ship bound to make history, is unforgivable. Enterprise was just another day in the park. It would have been nice to scale-back the look of Enterprise. I have nothing nice to say of the reboots, but if Abrams had designed that ship, if the use of handhelds and angles of the camera work had made Enterprise feel primal, basic, it would've not just felt fresh, but added to the danger of being in this universe for the first time.
I would've started the series on the first day of Enterprise's construction. I would've jumped through 32 years of construction in the first two episodes. I would've made Henry Archer the star of the pilot. Shot more scenes with Cochrane. I would show their "reasons," and what the Vulcans kept from Earth. And launch the ship at the end of the pilot.
Earn every scratch on that Hull, every phaser hit. Every time we stare down an enemy, Henry Archer and Zephrame Cochrane play in our minds. Especially, in the first season.
Instead of Bones' dialogue about matter compressed into a data stream, I'd tell the story of how the Enterprise incorporated the technology, and flashbacks to its first tests, conceptions. I'd earn the Communicators, the phasers, all those technologies we take for granted in the 23rd and 24th centuries. This, as a universe, means studying how those technologies are used in later shows. And building a narrative that not only does it for the first time, but is dramatic, and memorable enough to play in our heads, as Kirk fires phasers or uses a communicator. A true prequel that informs every series.
I would do the same for relationships among species. I'd see the beginnings of First Contact policies, of the Prime Directive, of the formation of the Federation.
These are the trailblazers that launch every series after it. With stories, not of charting new worlds, but informing all those journeys we have already seen.
And, if Berman wants out of the chair, let him. Don't fatigue us. Don't create a new Dominion of Xindi. Don't insult the audiences with conceptions we can see, in your narrative (Hoshi and Sluggo, for instance). Build an arc where Sluggo is her pet, for three episodes, and then releases him. Keep the mirror in-place, and don't bend that arc to one episode. Bend that arc over a season, let Sluggo get there before Hoshi.
They had the best concept of a show and burned through it with tropes and nonsense. It deserved to be canceled.
But, for Voyager, remember the danger. It was its greatest strength. In the annals of storytelling, more "The Fugitive," than "Lost in Space."
